Compared with other research fields, both microbiome and metabolomics data are complicated and have some unique characteristics, respectively. Thus, choosing an appropriate statistical test or method is a very important step in the analysis of microbiome and metabolomics data. However, this is still a difficult task for those biomedical researchers without a statistical background and for those biostatisticians who do not have research experiences in these fields.

Graduate students studying microbiome and metabolomics; statisticians, working on microbiome and metabolomics projects, either for their own research, or for their collaborative research for experimental design, grant application, and data analysis; and researchers who investigate biomedical and biochemical projects with the microbiome, metabolome, and multi-omics data analysis will benefit from reading this work.